Could USC make a play for JPL?

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, August 12, and you can expect another scorching day ahead of an expected cooldown later this week.

For nearly 90 years, Caltech has controlled the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the storied NASA facility in La Cañada Flintridge that remains at the vanguard of American space exploration.

It is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. space program: Its researchers are responsible for the first American satellite, the Voyager space probes, and nearly every rover that humans have landed on Mars.

So when NASA announced in May that it intends to open a competitive bidding process for the facility for the first time in its history, it shocked the scientific community — and set off a high-stakes scramble to determine the future of the lab. With Caltech’s oversight no longer secure, other suitors would surely line up.

The competition, which has huge implications for both the local economy and human space exploration, has remained largely opaque. But today, we have the scoop on one party interested in getting in on the action: the University of Southern California.

OOPSIES: An accounting error artificially inflated L.A.’s homelessness count, which had been used by critics of Mayor Karen Bass to bludgeon her track record on the issue. It appears that the error was only discovered when the L.A. Times’ Doug Smith and David Zahniser took a closer look at the data.